Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's sky: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
